Rant of the day: not sponsored by o2

Apparently o2’s new ad campaign demonstrates that customers are its priority. That makes my laugh: as an o2 customer I feel the exact opposite. Their customer service folks are well trained and polite. Which is lovely, but spectacularly useless in resolving much.

I’ve had the same mobile number for more than a decade, so am really rather keen to keep it. A couple of year’s ago the queer fella bought me an iphone as a peace offering. Iphone’s can do many things, but sadly it didn’t prove to be up to saving our marriage.

Anyways I should have my own mobile account in my own name. Kindly, the queer fella rang o2 and asked them to transfer the account to me. They couldn’t. They suggested he gave notice and ported the number to my new account.

I thought about moving back to Orange, as in my experience their customer care is better than any other phone company I’ve been with (and I’ve been with a few). However, the absence of any Orange service in my home is a teeny bit of a turn off. So, I stuck with o2. I thought it’d make the changeover easier. Especially as customers are their priority ‘n all.

The changeover failed to happen. I made a large number of calls to o2. As did the the queer fella. Some of the calls dropped off just when I thought things would be fixed. To their irritation, I am sure, I kept calling back and gave the whole sorry story from scratch to a fair few of their reps. Which was only half as irritating as their ‘hold’ musak. Their best suggestion was for the queer fella and I to be in the same room and phone them together, then they MAY be able to sort it out. We are separated. We live in different cities. That was their best suggestion.

After a week of this farce, the queer fella got hold of someone at o2 with a bit of sense who broke the rules and phoned me whilst talking to him on another line. Simples people. Within 24 hours my old number ported through and miraculously worked. All was forgiven.

That was last month.

This morning, my new shiny iphone had no service. I did all the usual on/off stuff. Still nada. The phone shop in the high street repeated the on/off stuff and directed me to the o2 shop, a short drive away. They did the same stuff, without resolution. They offered a new sim card if I confirmed to customer service that I am who I am. Which is, a customer: their priority.

Inexplicably customer service said the sim card had been disconnected and my phone number was being ported elsewhere. But I pay by direct debit I say, like that makes any kind of any difference! So customers are a priority except when they want to use their phones.

Where has it been ported to? It wasn’t entirely clear. Who requested the port? And when? And why would someone do this?. They didn’t know but, they did say: there appears to have been some confusion with your account. Demonstrating once again my priority status.

I was inside an o2 shop so I didn’t get cut off and after less than half an hour of hold ‘musak’ they got me up and running again. Although the customer service guy wasn’t entirely sure how that happened and was as surprised as me when one last on/off thing worked.

Feel better now. My rant is over, but if you’re looking to port a number I’d suggest avoiding o2.